


Theft Aboard Westeros 1

by just_a_dram



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Class Issues, F/M, Heroism, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 08:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4912363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One can’t be friends with a Red. That’s Sansa’s firm belief until the day her small hoard of sweets is discovered by the pair of uppity Blue guards rifling through her room during a random search of their apartment. On that day, everything changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Theft Aboard Westeros 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the sci-fi day of gameoships' event A Night at the Movies.

Jon Snow is the only Level Red Sansa knows. She’s seen others, scuttling around, going about their low level duties on the Command Level, where her family lives, but he is the only one whose name she knows and whose face is as familiar as those in her home. For most of her childhood he was in and out of their apartment, where he is tasked with deliveries and removals. He is not much older than she is—a couple years at most—and she won’t begin her chosen path, Honored Mother, for several years, but those from Red start their assigned duties early. Life expectancy is shorter below—something about the radiation shield being compromised on the bottom of the ship after being clipped by space debris—so there’s not much time to waste.

Arya has radical ideas about the Reds not living as long due to unequal resource allocation, but that’s nonsense cooked up by agitators. Arya should be more selective about who she chooses to spend her time with and what causes she takes up. The Captain wouldn’t deny the Reds what they need and Sansa trusts that the Builders knew what they were about when they made some people Reds, others Blue, a very few Yellow, and her ancestors Commanders.

Despite his place in the natural order, Sansa’s siblings have always been friendly with Jon, especially her younger, radical sister, and while Sansa has helped him on occasion, saving some little scrap for him, which she thought he might find useful, she wouldn’t consider him a friend. Not to be nasty about it, but one can’t be friends with a Red. It would go against the ship’s order.

That’s her firm belief until a small hoard of sweets is discovered by the pair of uppity Blue guards rifling through her room during a random search of their apartment. On that day, everything changes.

She sits in the spacious living space afforded them by her ancestors’ status, hands folded between her legs, praying to the Builders that the guards will not open the box tucked away at the bottom of her closet. That is where she hid the lemon cakes she and Jeyne took from the commissary to eat together later. They felt so deliciously naughty at the time, swiping the sticky sweet cakes from the Captain’s table, but now Sansa’s certain the risk was not worth the price she will pay if she is discovered.

Her parents will be humiliated, when they discover she’s been carried off by guards. It will be a stain upon the whole family.

Her humiliation will eventually be made public, there’s no hiding it, but for now, her shame is limited by her family’s absence. Robb is off practicing to be a pilot, his chosen path which her parents are so proud of, and the rest of her siblings are in Commanders’ Elementary and Continuing Education, not yet old enough to have graduated. Her parents are both attending to their occupations, faithfully fulfilling their duties. No one save Jon Snow, who stands at the sink, a bag of trash clutched in his hands and his eyes trained on the floor, will be witness to her arrest. This might not be his apartment, but anyone present at the outset of a search is required to stay until it is complete, so that nothing may be spirited away, and therefore, he is stuck here for as long as the guards investigate.

Before they ever hold out her box of contraband, she knows she has been discovered, when the guards march back into the living space, their boots heavy on the metal floor, sounding her fate. Their smiles give them away. It isn’t every day the child of a Commander is caught committing an offense. They will be rewarded for their diligence, and she will suffer. Oh, how she will suffer.

Theft is taken very seriously aboard Westeros 1. Resources are too scarce to tolerate someone taking more than their share. The punishment for a first offense is ten lashes of the whip, and Sansa trembles to think of herself tied to the disciplinary post and bared to the waist in the Central Auditorium on Level Yellow with the eyes of the whole ship upon her. The skin on her back will split and bleed if the Administering Official doesn’t take pity on her as he brings the whip down. They rarely do, even for the high born. It helps keep the lower members satisfied to see that justice is delivered without regard to rank.

“What are these?” the hairy Blue demands, extending the box out to her.

Sansa has never been in trouble before, not once, and she’s not sure what she’s supposed to say. Arya would run, for all the good it would do her. “Lemon cakes,” she whispers.

That isn’t the right answer. They provide the right one for her. “Contraband. Extra food taken at the expense of the people.”

“Well?” the guard prompts, when she stares up at them in terror filled silence.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she says, careful not to say _we_.

It won’t lessen her own sentence to have had an accomplice. It would only cause her friend pain and embarrassment. So long as they don’t put her in the interrogation chair, she won’t give Jeyne up. Sansa isn’t sure she’s brave enough to face the interrogation chair.

The taller Blue grabs her arm, dragging her upright. She squeaks. Fear makes her knees go weak, and he squeezes too hard too hard to keep her upright against the weight of her sinking body.

“Stop.”

For a moment Sansa doesn’t know who has spoken. It isn’t until Jon steps forward, the trash still held in his right hand, his left held out to the guard palm up, that it dawns on her that it was him. His voice is deeper than she remembers it being the last time they spoke.

“It was me.”

“What’s this, Red?” the guard fisting her arm asks.

“I took the lemon cakes and hid them in Miss Stark’s room.”

The hairy guard looks from Jon to Sansa, his thick eyebrows furrowed. “Miss Stark confessed.”

“She has a gentle heart,” Jon says, nodding at her. “But Master Stark will not thank you for wrongfully arresting his eldest daughter. She is to be an Honored Mother.”

This crime could endanger her chosen path. The Captain doesn’t want immoral breeding stock. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

She looks him up and down, standing tall and proud in his loose fitting red scrubs. How did Jon know her chosen path?

“You took these?” the taller guard asks Jon.

The guard lets loose of her, and without the man’s big mitt holding her up, Sansa sinks back down into the chair. She sucks in a great gasping breath, as she watches the guards close in around Jon.

“While doing removals,” Jon says.

He’s lying, and either he will pay the price for theft and the Administering Official will think nothing of bringing the whip down on his broad back with the full force of his strength or Jon’s deception will be discovered, and he will be punished for the lie. Either way he will suffer on her account.

His eyes flick to hers, as he drops the trash and the guards roughly grab his arms, jerking him forward.

“Red scum,” the one man mutters. “You better hope it’s your first offense,” says the other.

Is it his first? Second offenses are punished more harshly. Recalcitrant criminals have their dominant hands removed. Jon needs his hands for his assigned duty. Without a duty or a path, there is no purpose and the purposeless are jettisoned.

“There’s no need for this. My father can handle him.”

“That’s not the way it’s done, Miss,” the hairy one says with a scowl. “Your father will understand that.”

Maybe. Her father is pledged to uphold the law of the ship and he takes his vows seriously, but he’s also a good man with a soft spot for the Red who spends a good portion of his day in their home.

“It’s okay,” Jon says, comforting her, when he’s the one being taken off to the Confinement Center.

He doesn’t fight as they drag him past her, a head taller than either of the guards that twist his arms behind his back.

“Jon,” she breathes, reaching for his red sleeve. It’s a cruder weave than the clothing she wears. A rough recycle job. It wouldn’t be approved for wear on the Commander Level.

She stands, heart pounding out of her chest and hands shaking. She is bright. Bright enough to choose any path. Her teachers always told her so. She should be able to spin some story that will absolve them both and save Jon from taking her punishment. But nothing comes to her, as she grips the back of her chair and watches the door to the apartment slide closed behind Jon and the guards.

She always called him Red before, she realizes. Just like those guards. Not to be mean. Just so as to be precise. But she was so wrong. He’s much more than his color. Jon’s brave and good, and she’ll have to watch him take her lashes, knowing it was her crime that laid him open.


End file.
